Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
To isolate brake circuits and properly diagnose spongy pedal.
Clamp off each brake hose (the flexible ones). Either use one or more vise grips, carefully adjusted so they do not damage the hose. I prefer to do all 4 at the same time, but it just takes more time if you can only do one at a time.
This eliminates that (or those) calipers-wheel cylinders from the system.
If you do all 4 simultaneously and you know the system is properly bled. The brake pedal should be as hard as a rock with virtually no travel, since the fluid can not move through the lines.
1. Pedal still spongy, bad master cylinder.
2. Pedal hard as a rock, master is good.
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Front calipers are notorious for frozen sliding pins on the single piston type calipers. Get them loose and clean lube the pins and the orfices they slide in.
Not a bad idea to check the pads, which in in severe cases can have much more wear on one pad if the pins were sticking-frozen. Also look for uneven wear on the pads friction material due to sticking pins.
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regards
mech
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wow. thanks, mech! I'll have to buy or borrow a couple more pairs of vice grips. I've never taken the vice grip trick much farther than changing calipers or turning nasty compression fittings on brakes!
good tip on the slide pins, since I'll be in there anyway I'll make sure to give them a good cleaning and greasing!
More things I found with skidmark - took her to taco bell with the family for dinner (big spenders)
and was bothered by the fact that the driver's door wouldn't bring the dome light on (it would come on if I fiddled with it, but not if the door opened)
I figured it wouldn't be too hard to figure out, but wanted to share anyway.
the problem : the contacts inside the switch were corroded and interrupting the current flow when the switch was made.
the solution: my blast cabinet!
before (this wasn't the driver door switch, but the contact point is at the base of the male spade connector, and it touches the little "v" to the right of it):
after:
knocked the rust off the contacts and now all the doors can make the dome light come on! yay!
not sure what years this applies to, but the front of the swithes look like this:
and there's only one screw per switch, the other side hooks into the body thru the opening. here's the screw:
also plugged the speedo cable back into the tranny (not connected before I got her) hopefully I'll know how fast I'm going on the skidmark's next outing!
thanks,
Victor